I know what's on everyone's minds right now. Animal rights. I can tell because it is on the cover of all the magazines. So while I am writing this I think I will just take a minute and have a look at one of the magazines right now to confirm that belief. Hey ... wait a minute, that's not animal rights, that's Britney Spears smoking cigarettes by a pool with some guy who looks like a house painter! Oh, so I guess animal rights isn't on everyone's minds. But all the same, its been on mine.
You see I'm a vegetarian. I became a vegetarian some years ago because of the reasons of cruelty to animals and what I can only describe as a fairweather concern for animal rights. When became a vegetarian it was actually pretty easy. I read some stuff, thought about for a while, discussed it with some people, and then I stopped eating meat.*
It has been smooth sailing ever since. I have never found being a vegetarian even the slightest bit difficult. Giving up meat was easy because of the number of alternatives, most of which are way more healthy anyway. People ask if I miss meat, the answer is easy, I never did, I still don't. Some people say they can't live without meat, that makes me laugh. The total drama of that statement, like its comparable to giving up sex, booze or guns.
Well I guess some people really like meat, and if that is their passion than that is their passion.
Anyway, just to see how I would feel about it I tried a little test and ate meat a few times recently. I felt nothing. No big change. It just tasted like food. I guess I was experimenting with my own reactions since I wasn't sure how I felt about being a vegetarian. But the point of the experiment was to test that and what I have now started to think about, which are the arguments for and against.
As I can see it there are strong arguments for both sides. I have a few arguments for both. These arguments are what I have gathered together from shit I have read, people I talked to and my own thoughts on the subject. There are also lots of other arguments, but these are the ones I think about, and I can't decide which is right. This is harder to decide than who between Mike Tyson, that woman who stars on the TV show Alias, or the dog from Frasier is most likely to win a speed reading contest.
So here's my vegetarian argument. The world is full of different animals, the most powerful and smartest being Homo Sapiens. We stand at the apex of all the species on earth. We are the boss ... well at least some of us are. But try and imagine instead there was a species above us that was smarter and more powerful than us. We were on the second rung and Turbo Sapiens were at the apex, so we were like monkeys to them. Now imagine they found us incredibly delicious so they caged us and bred us for slaughter.
We would sit in cages and watch our families and loved ones shanghaied and slaughtered, and know with total certainty that our time would come, just like theirs. This would be very unpleasant and our lives would be one long nightmare of suffering.
And as far as our captors go, we would hate them and consider them to be the most revolting despicable creatures since they would be deliberately causing us all this needless suffering.
So if we would feel that way about them, why are we somehow better? Why doesn't the suffering we cause other animals matter? If eating a lower life form is bad for these hypothetical monsters it would seem that the same rules apply to us. Don't they?
Here's another thing to consider. Hundreds of years ago having a slave was considered perfectly normal, and in our own century women didn't have the same status as men and weren't allowed to vote. There were people who fought against these injustices and they are now looked back upon in history as heroes or trailblazers. Also, the people who resisted change and supported the historical injustice are looked back upon as selfish and feeble minded. So if eating meat becomes the next big injustice that our civilization outgrows whose side do you want to be on, the compassionate progressive or the selfish imbecile?
But its not that simple because the injustice was clear with slavery and disenfranchisement. Those ideas were total bullshit and needed to be cast aside. So the question is, is eating meat an injustice?
It could be argued that ending an animals life to provide you nourishment is not actually injustice, it is a part of the natural order. How it is part of the natural order is that your life has worth, much like the life of a chicken, but you may need to eat the chicken to survive. So if one of you must die, which one dies?
Is my life more valuable than the life of a chicken? I guess that depends on the chicken. I think I have met people who if their life was measured up against the life of a chicken it would at best be a close tie. I wish I could say that the tremendous contributions to mankind I have made qualifies to put me far ahead of an exceptional chicken, but can I? Tough call.
And there's another thing, which is a little depressing. Even if I didn't eat that chicken, she was still going to die eventually. Everything dies. No one gets out of this universe alive, its the way it is. Do we get angry with the universe for it? We do, but we know its pointless because it isn't doing it on purpose ... possibly. Its the way things are. Things live, then they die.
If the universe is going to claim the life of a cow via old age, why is that somehow better than that cow dying so that someone else may live. It's giving that cow a death of honor, the death of a hero.
Maybe you can see my point. The cow is either food for you or lost in the cold inky darkness of the expanding universe. One way or another its days are numbered. Just like yours, but not mine. But yes, even mine.
Nature doesn't seem too concerned with being fair or eliminating suffering. And its not like animals aren't violent. A lot of animals are born killers, from Killer Whales to Basset Hounds. A lot of animals even have weapons like fangs and deadly poisons, such as the Jellyfish, the Scorpion or the Leprechaun.
Human beings are special among the animals. Human beings recognize the unruly swirly universe is chaotic and we live in it with a paradox. We create law and order, concepts of justice, fairness and suffering which are a sophisticated way to help each other survive. But we know these concepts aren't echoed in the animal world and we don't expect them to be. We don't call a cheetah a murderer for taking down a gazelle, and we don't imprison it. We don't judge and imprison animals for not following our rules because we know they don't share the same philosophy.
Its the same reason we don't give dogs drivers licenses, or let elephants be the chairman of the board of fortune 500 companies. All his policies would be related to peanut butter corporate acquisition and he would drain the company funds to spend on mouse traps.
Animals don't live in our moral and social sphere, so why should the rules that protect us extend to them? It seems kind of irrational. Are we going to go out into the wilderness and try and stop a leopard from eating a zebra? Are we going to force sharks to eat vegetables?
I think not my dear(or sir).
So anyway, there are the 2 sides of the argument as I can see them. I don't know where I stand. But I do know that I will probably continue to be a vegetarian just because I still feel compelled to be and since vegetarianism remains to be trendy in the emo-indie scene.
But I also know I no longer feel vegetarians have exclusive ownership of some moral high ground. Except of course in relation to factory farming which is a fucking atrocity. Not to mention it is the singular way we get most of our meat. So chew on that.
*I should probably mention during that time I have bought a leather jacket, leather shoes, belts and never spent a second debating whether that was morally right. Consistent? Not exactly.